I'm just a lowly social scientist, so excuse my ignorance.

Why are Alberta's post-secondary institutions playing along with this "Fair Deal" game?

Here are some questions (a thread)... https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=72873A72B965B-B4A4-1E7D-C4631F54EBCA3CC1

1) Alberta post-secondaries rely less on federal dollars than institutions in the rest of the country. Is this a problem? If so, is the answer to pull provincial funding, and then call on the federal government to fill the gap?

1a) Does anyone recognize the absurdity in that strategy? (Pulling provincial dollars from Alberta PSIs reduces researchers' capacity to compete for those national grants.)

1b) If getting a "fair deal" means increasing the proportion of federal dollars in Alberta PSIs, the simplest answer would be to pull all provincial research funding. The federal share would go through the roof. Is this part of the Alberta government's strategy?

1c) Aside from "proportion of federal $ in our budgets," did anyone look at other metrics (e.g., total share of federal research dollars flowing into Alberta institutions, success rates of Alberta-based applications)?

The data's there (and it doesn't show disparities). https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/results-resultats/stats-statistiques/index-eng.aspx

2) Does anyone on this panel understand how federal research dollars are awarded? (Hint: it's not based on per-capita funding.)

2a) Do any of the members of the panel want to live in a world where research dollars are awarded based on population instead of merit?

2b) Has anyone investigated whether AB gets more than its "fair share" of *total federal dollars* under the merit-based approach? (see 1c)

3) Were social scientists and humanities scholars deliberately excluded from this panel (and exercise)?

(If so, thank you.)